


Coffee Table For Two

by pantalaimon



Category: Red Valley (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Retail, Amnesia, Angst, Bakery and Coffee Shop, Coffee Shops, Conspiracy Theories, Detectives, Developing Friendships, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Memory Loss, Not Canon Compliant, Other, Strangers to Friends, Wholesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:53:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27784033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pantalaimon/pseuds/pantalaimon
Summary: Warren Godby can't remember anything about his life before a year ago. He reads books, does his memory exercises, and gets a job at a quiet coffee shop. All he wants is his life back. Until an eccentric stranger named Gordon shows up and orders an absolutely appalling coffee.
Kudos: 3





	Coffee Table For Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey this is chapter one, I'll do my best to update frequently! You can probably tell that I also work in a coffee shop and for some reason I just love making coffee shop AU's, it gives me a chance to flex my ~coffee knowledge~ lmao

The bell over the door jingled and Warren groaned, putting down his book. He couldn’t go a page without someone coming in and wanting to order a coffee, he’d never get through the thing at this rate. Putting on his apron again, Warren walked out of the back room and tried to put on a pleasant face. 

“Hi, welcome to Montrose Cafe, what can I get started for you?” The first few times he had said that to a customer, the words had come out in the wrong order, but the phrase was muscle memory now. 

The woman on the other side of the counter barely seemed to hear him. She said “Hi, good thank you” absently and continued to squint at the menu on the wall behind him. Warren tried not to sigh as he waited, drumming his fingers quietly on the countertop. 

“What do you have for… just regular coffee?” the woman asked, looking like the menu had given her a headache. 

“Er, well, the house brew today is a Haitian dark roast.” Warren offered, in a way that hopefully made him sound like he knew what he was talking about.

The woman looked blank. “Is that… is that good, or…” 

“Oh! Well, I mean…” Warren looked back at the pot on the counter. “It’s quite dark, as I said, and… well. It all just tastes like coffee to me.” 

The woman nodded thoughtfully. “Mmm. I’ll just have that then. For here, if you could.”

“Sure thing.” Warren hit the buttons on the register and pressed the hot bitter stream of coffee into a cup and just like that, the woman had whisked away to an armchair by the (fake) fireplace and pulled out her phone. Resisting another sigh, Warren wandered into the back room again, reaching for his book. Working in the coffee shop was a piece of cake past 10 am, on the verge of being actually boring. 

The jingle of the bell sounded again just as Warren cracked open his book, and he slammed it down slightly harder than he meant to, letting loose a little “come ON” under his breath as he stood up again. Heading out into the main shop, Warren put his polite face on and spoke to the man on the other side of the counter. 

“Hi, welcome to Montrose Cafe, what can I get started for you?”

“Is that named after the band, or the city?”

Warren blinked. Then he squinted. The man in front of him was average looking, slightly mousy, and dressed not quite formally enough to be an office worker, but slightly too formally for most other jobs. He looked questioningly at Warren, holding a laptop and a tape deck. 

“I uh- actually have no idea? I’m not the owner, so…”

The man shrugged and started digging for his wallet. “That’s fair. Anyway, do you guys do breves here?”

Warren reflexively glanced towards the fridge that contained all the milk. “Yeah, that’s with single cream, right?”

The man looked up. “Yes! Thank God, some places don’t even keep single cream on hand, they expect me to make do with whole milk. It’s ridiculous! Okay so, I’ll have a large breve, five shots, with amaretto if you’ve got it.”

For the second time since meeting this man, Warren blinked in surprise. Five shots?? And he didn’t think anyone had ordered an amaretto flavored coffee from him. It sounded… frankly it sounded terrible. And it cost a whopping seven pound fifty, which made Warren wince when he read out the price, but the man didn’t seem to notice. He tossed some money onto the counter and continued to shuffle through his bag, clearly looking for something. 

Handing back the change, Warren grabbed a large mug and headed to the espresso machine. He glanced back to see the man dumping his stuff onto a table near the (still fake) fireplace, much to the annoyance of the woman with the “just coffee”. Something about his face was nagging in the back of Warren’s mind, just a tiny touch of familiarity. _I wonder if I knew him,_ he thought to himself, then laughed humorlessly. _It’s not like I would remember._

Three pumps amaretto, dump in the five (five!!!) shots, steam the single cream (good lord it was loud), pour on top, stir (very gently) and voila! Possibly the strangest drink Warren had ever made sat on the counter. Usually he would call out the name of the drink to the sleep deprived queue, but seeing as there was no queue, he took it out to the table himself. 

“One… extreme breve for you.” Warren announced as he set the mug down gingerly on the table, trying to avoid the mess of papers and audio tapes that were strewn about the surface. 

“Oh man, thank you so much! Yeah, it is pretty extreme, innit? Quite a lot of that good ol’ coffee flavor packed into the same drink. But fuck me, is it good. You should try it sometime, I swear you’ll like it.”

“Mmm, not a fan of amaretto, myself, but I might have to try it anyways, just for the experience.” Warren turned to leave, flicking his eyes over the scrawled notes all over the table. _… the prospect of immortality… glycerol … Red Valley facility …_ The ever-present crease between his eyebrows deepened slightly as he flicked his eyes back up to the man, who was carefully sipping from the mug. “Anyway, enjoy your drink.”

He turned, his mind already drifting back to his book, when he heard a loud “Oh my GOD” come from behind him. Warren whirled around, his hands raising defensively without him telling them to. The man was staring wide eyed at the mug, and Warren quickly dropped his arms before anyone besides himself noticed. 

“Sorry, is there a problem? With the coffee?”

The man looked up, almost reverentially. “Absolutely not, this is the best drink I’ve ever had in my life!” He stood up and stuck his hand out eagerly. “What did you say your name was again?”

“Uh, Warren. Warren Godby.” He shook the outstretched hand, unsurprised to find the handshake much firmer than was comfortable. Everything about this man seemed to be… a lot. 

“Well, Warren Godby, you are quite the coffee wizard. A-Are you in here every day?”

“Most- most afternoons, yeah. Could you let go of my hand now?”

“Oh! Yeah, sorry. I’m Gordon. Porlock, but most people just… well, they just call me Gordon, I suppose.” 

“Well. It’s nice to meet you, Gordon.” Warren thought briefly of his book in the back, and then resigned himself to the fact that Gordon was looking at him expectantly, clearly ready for an entire conversation. He fished for something to say, and glanced at the table again. “Are you doing a research project, or…” 

“Oh! Well, sort of.” Gordon sat down again, attempting to order his papers and glancing up apologetically when several of them fell onto the floor. “Ah, if you could just…”

“Sure, yeah.” Warren bent down to scoop them up, flicking through them as he handed them back to Gordon. “Cryonics?”

Gordon’s eyes lit up. “Yeah! You know what it is?”

“Ah, no, sorry. Never heard of it.” Warren pulled out a second chair at the table, making sure to position himself so that he could still see the door. 

“Essentially, it’s an experimental branch of science that deals with the preservation of humans at extreme low temperatures.”

“What, just putting people in a freezer?”

Gordon rolled his eyes slightly. “Well, no, it’s a _bit_ more complicated than that, there’s special preparation of the body, insanely fast freezing and thawing speeds- anyway, the _point_ is, cryonics is still in the experimental stages, right, so there’s some pretty fucked up stuff happening at places that deal with it. This one place, Red Valley, it’s officially listed as a ‘seed vault’ but…” Gordon’s voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “There’s not a lot of seeds at the Red Valley Seed Vault.”

Warren pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to process all that. “So, wait a minute. You’re investigating this? Using tape and loose leaf paper?”

Gordon slumped a bit. “Well. Not officially. I’m not a journalist or anything. I just happen to be doing my own research about the whole thing. I’m like a secret little Poirot.”

“A what, sorry?”

“Hercule Poirot? The detective?”

Warren shifted uncomfortably. This was his least favorite part about conversations with strangers. “Ah, I-I’m not familiar.”

“Ah man, didn’t you ever read Christie novels when you were younger?”

“I don’t- I don’t remember.”

Leaning back in his chair, Gordon smiled wistfully into the distance. “If you like mystery, they’re great! And I like mystery. Well, maybe you did read some, people tend to mix them up with the lesser known Holmes stories.” He laughed. 

“I don’t remember much of anything, really. Maybe I did read them. I wouldn’t know.”

“You don’t remember anything? What, do you have amnesia or something?”

Now it was Warren’s turn to give a short laugh. “Actually, yeah. I don’t like telling people, but I can’t remember a god damn thing before a year ago, as hard as I fucking try.”

For the first time since meeting the man, Warren watched as Gordon was rendered speechless.


End file.
